In life, it’s important to surround yourself around people who support and understand you. We should be surrounding ourselves with people who lift us up, not bring us down.

I’ve talked on this topic a bit before with my blog Energies are Contagious, but I want to dive in a bit deeper and emphasize its importance. Over this past year, I’ve really started to understand how important it is to surround yourself with people who support you. This means family and friends. Hopefully you already have that relationship with your family; family is family and there is no replacing that. Friends are a bit different; friends can come and go whenever. You can always make new friends and you can always part ways with friends that are not supportive.

The best kinds of friends are ones that you consider family. Ones that if you were in trouble you know you could call on immediately to come help you. Even if that meant they had to take a plane ride to get there. This is something I’ve experienced myself. When I was in my car accident, I had the support of some amazing friends, friends that I consider family at this point in my life. The amount of love and support I got from these friends, during one of the hardest moments of my life is something I will never forget. These friends understand me. They encourage me to keep working towards my goals. They understand my life decisions and my change in careers. They are girls I would call family.

Now not everything has been perfect for me in friendships. I’ve had friends come and go over the years. The friendships that don’t last end for certain reasons. And you know what? It’s FINE! Sure it sucks when you realize a friend may not be someone you keep in your life forever, but it’s important to accept it and move on. Relationships should never be one sided; friendships are a two way street. It’s important that if you are invested in your friends life, that they should be invested in yours. Not a game of you constantly asking how they are doing, or asking if they want to hang out and you don’t get the same respect in return. Friends we want to keep around are friends that stand by us when we are having a hard time, or support us if we have a goal we want to achieve. We need friends who encourage us when we need them the most, better yet when we don’t need them at all. Friends should ALWAYS be encouraging. Even if they don’t fully understand where we are coming from, a good friend will always be there to listen.

And not every friend needs to be someone you consider family. It’s also important to have friends that have similar interests as you. Friends that understand your day-to-day decisions. For me, I’ve learned that the people I connect with the most are people that enjoy being healthy (at least somewhat) or enjoy being active. These are two things I’m very passionate about. I find that I connect with these friends the most because they have similar interests. I feel the most comfortable with these friends because I can talk about these things and I feel understood.

I thought this topic was important to touch on because I’ve had numerous conversations about friendship this past month. Be open to change, even if that means in your friendship circle. Make sure you are surrounding yourself around people who love, care and support you. Those positive relationships will benefit you greatly and get you much further in life.